How do you see me?

While browsing my journal, I came across this post from March 24th.  I liked how the juxtaposition of two ideas merged into a consciousness-raising thought.

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Several things came together recently that has clarified my thinking about beings and how we see them.

I was reading in a booklet on the Disabilities Awareness Merit BAdge for Boy Scouts because I am holding a workshop this weekend on it to help boys in our troop earn it.  The booklet explained about using first person language when discussing disabilities, or more importantly when discussing people with disabilities.  It said that to call someone disabled or handicapped suggested that this was their identity, instead of merely a condition that they deal with.  The difference is that someone isn’t their disability, they are a person with a disability.  That seemingly small distinction is in fact huge in how we think about those around us.  

The second thing that happened is that I came across a video on YouTube with Morgan Freeman talking about Black History month. It is only a minute long, a clip from 60 minutes where Wally Schaeffer asks Morgan Freeman why he doesn’t want there to be a Black History month.  He says because American history is black history.  He asks Wally is there a White History month?  Wally was left speechless for a moment.  Finally, he said in defense, I’m Jewish.  So Morgan asked him when Jewish HIstory month was?  He said, there isn’t one.  “Do you want one?” asks Freeman.  “No!” said Schaeffer.  ah, of course.  It only separates us from others.  These distinctions.  I agree with him wholeheartedly.  Of course, the obvious first thought for me was Women’s History month.  I realized that I don’t want one either.

So this morning I began putting two and two together.  When someone looks at me and sees a woman first, they are limiting me in their thinking right off the bat.  When I think of myself as a woman, or that person as a man, or that one over there as black or brown or blind or disabled, I am thinking first with my eyes….I am limiting in my thought their identity to a physical body.  

So if I shouldn’t be first identifying people with their skin color, or their gender or their physical and mental abilities, then how should I identify people?  The answer for me comes from the Bible, but it is the same in every religion and philosophy on earth.  People are beings, first.  I call them spiritual ideas, image of God, an expression of Life, wholly good.  The Bible says it this way, “and God saw all that he had made, and behold, it was very good.”  

This beingness isn’t relegated to what we call living organic beings.  It includes all of creation--including those things that we call “things” or inanimate objects.  If it exists, it is woven into this tapestry of being…each strand touching every other strand, making a single garment of being, whole, One.  

Seeing everything as “being”.  This keeps me in the moment, in the now, which really is the only place we exist, individually and collectively.  

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Blessings,

debra

Just Be

Monday, March 19, 2012

Several years ago, when I wrote the following post, I was introduced to the idea of mindfulness through watching a movie called Peaceful Warrior.  As I read this again just a few days ago, I was struck with how insightful the ideas in it are.  I'm not trying to toot my own horn here--in fact, it would be tempting to think that since I had written this 4 years ago, I should be further along in my grasp of this spiritual reality.

But I am not self-flagellating or self-congratulating.  I am merely grateful that this awareness is something of a constant in my life.  If I forget and begin to believe my stories of a past or future, this awareness will find me again, and I will remember.

I honestly believe that this life is perfect.  It is beautiful and gives us each exactly what we need every moment.  We can learn by it, honor it, see its beauty, or not.  That is the choice we have each day, each moment.  Namaste'

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Thursday, March 27, 2008

Just BE

I recently watched the movie Peaceful Warrior.  I really enjoyed it, as much for its magical moments as for its message.  Yesterday I sat at the park while my son played in the sandbox, and not having brought a book to read, I looked around me at the trees, grass, sky and basked in the beauty of the day--wanting to really see it and experience it.

As the protagonist in the movie, I saw that there is never nothing going on.  For even sitting there in this quiet space I saw much going on around me -- my son very focused on playing, insects buzzing, cars with people passing by, a tennis player practicing his game at the net.  And it set me to thinking about nowness.  If I truly live in the “now”, then I don’t need to worry about attaining some position or altitude of thought, I just need to be me--my highest sense of me as I know it right now.  

So much of my life has been concerned with reaching some goal or level or position, or more carefully worded, I would say concerned that I had NOT reached a certain level.  I have been very preoccupied with this singular fact--that I had not lived up to the promise others saw in me so many years ago.  And the more years that go by without doing so, the more anxious I have become about it, and the more I pressure I have felt to perform, and the more resistant I have become to doing so.  

I’ll never forget the words of a friend’s mom, that I “will change the world.”  But I didn’t, and it doesn’t look much like I will.  But for once, I have glimpsed life as something other than a path that leads either to success or failure.  I see the journey.  And this journey isn’t something that is planned, marveled or disdained, compared or expected.  It is just this--this moment--loved, lived, looked at with honesty, humility and grace.  What more is there to do?  

Am I better than my neighbor because I keep my house a little neater, or worse because I don’t?  Am I better than the sacker at the grocery store, because he is serving me, or worse because I am not earning any wages?  Am I better than the homeless man at the shelter, am I worse than the wealthy businesswoman who drives past me in her Mercedes?  

In a life lived in the now, we are all equally valuable.  Perhaps a homeless man helps someone driving a Mercedes with a flat tire, because it is what he has to give.  And in that moment, aren’t they equally receptive to God’s goodness and grace?  God doesn’t love the man who puts his head on a patch of grass at night any less than he loves the one whose head sinks into a down pillow.  And really, neither should we....regardless of which man we may be.

I guess for once I am starting to see what it means to live in the now, not living for accolades or honors, but just for expressing divine Love, Truth and Life as I understand them, for living each moment as honestly as I can, for loving those I am with unconditionally, and to stop judging this moment by any of the moments that came before or are  possibly or likely coming after.  

And those demons of pride or shame about which goals I haven’t attained or even planned seem so much thinner, with so much less substance now.  It’s truly a moment of sweet peace, as I am learning to

Just be.

Our River

River was my beloved friend and companion for many years. He was my dog, a golden retriever mix that my husband and I adopted when he was less than a year old. He had been found on the streets and needed our tenderest care for him to adopt us as well.

I wrote this blogpost in June, 2007. When I think back on those days and weeks leading up to River's passing, I realize now that a shift took place back then, which has lead me to where I am now. When he died, these words came to me so clearly: "I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it." And I can honestly say that no man has. There was much I didn't understand at the time about life and death. There is still much to learn. But from that moment my search for a greater understanding of those things has been my constant companion, as River had once been.

Here is that first blogpost to A River's Heart. I will post the next few postings over the next few days, one at a time and then continue on with current posts. For like a river, life and good keep flowing.

Our River

The past few weeks and months I have been engaged in a life and death struggle. It has brought with it much reflection, intense spiritual surgery, loss and gain. I learned so much that I don't even know where to begin, and it doesn't come to me all at once as I write, but in pieces. I should have kept a journal as I traveled that road. I didn't. So I will have to piece it together as I go.

Not long ago, River, my faithful canine companion of the last 12 years, passed on quietly at home. He had stopped eating some time before that despite all of my efforts to change his mind. I wondered even after his passing, did I do the right thing? Should I have taken him to the vet to have him "put down"? Everyone has their opinion about that, and to the best of my understanding, it wouldn't have changed how I feel--or how River feels.

Either way, I would have experienced guilt for whatever decision I made--that seems to be the nature of this mortal existence.

Either way, River understood the forever-embracing love I have for him--this is the grace of divine Love.

I have questions to ask and answers to find. What is healing? Why isn’t it something we always experience here on earth but sometimes later? And what does that look like? What is life if it isn’t book-ended by birth and death? Why do there seem to be limits to what we can do in this life? How do my thoughts relate to my experience and more importantly, to the experience of those in my care--my children, my pets? How do those thoughts relate to healing? Is healing the only evidence of spiritual intuition and spiritual growth? Which brings me back to “what is healing?” Is this even the right question? Or should I be asking, “what is being?”

I know what River’s being consisted of--that part he showed to us. Faithfulness, watchfulness, sincerity, joy, gratitude, gentleness, unconditional love, patience. It seems so much more than we gave back. I guess thats how he got to be a dog, because he expressed complete humility. River, I hope I can follow in your paw prints and learn what you taught me by how you lived your life. Thank you for everything, Buddy.